Pool of talent can achieve the extraordinary

Who wants to be ordinary? Words that have haunted me ever since I heard them uttered in the manner of a bull: a bellow that filled a small room.

The bellower in question was a large, stout, sublimely ugly man who seemed to believe that the only unforgivable sin was complacency. You! Do you want to be ordinary? Hell no.

That was eight years ago. Back then British swimming had some way to go to achieve so lofty an ambition as ordinariness. In the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000, British swimmers came back without a single medal for the first time since 1948. British swimmers were objects of pity, a joke when they turned their backs.